What In The World Happened Here?
Index: 101 - What In The World Happened Here? CI: (
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wagga
Lower Merced Pass Lake in Yosemite was the scene of the legendary December 9, 1976 crash of a marijuana-laden airplane.
What In The World Happened Here? CII: (
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wagga
Newhall Pass is the location of
Beale's Cut, which was featured in several silent film-era movies.
What In The World Happened Here? CIII: (
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wagga
Bombing of Darwin, Australia by the Japanese on February 19 1942. It was the first and largest single attack against Australia by a foreign aggressor.
What In The World Happened Here? CIV: (
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wagga
A
ghost bike is a bicycle set up as a roadside memorial in a place where a cyclist has been killed or severely injured, usually by a motor vehicle. Te one pictures is in New York City, where there are dozens.
What In The World Happened Here? CV: (
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wagga
The Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, NY -- Home of the
Miracle on Ice What In The World Happened Here? CVI: (
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wagga
Ball's Pyramid, 3600; long and 1800' tall, is 300 miles off of the east coast of Australia, southeast of Brisbane and northeast of Sydney. It is home to
Dryococelus australis, a giant, lobster-like insect.
What In The World Happened Here? CVII: (
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AlanK
The site of the former
Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, USA. As part of the machinations that eventually led to moving the Dodgers to Los Angeles, Walter O'Malley commissed a novel stadium design that would have given Brooklyn the first
domed (as opposed to doomed) stadium. What In The World Happened Here? CVIII: (
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SierraNevada
Mount Whitney, CA. The Smithsonian Hut is a speck near the bottom of the picture, about a quarter of the way from the left.
What In The World Happened Here? CIX: (
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wagga
Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and the
Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy (as opposed to Venice, CA, USA) were the scene of a
recent experiment aimed at increasing wireless communications bandwidths.
What In The World Happened Here? CX: (
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SierraNevada
The
Albert Einstein House in Princeton, NJ is currently occupied by Nobel Lauerate (Economics, 2007) Eric Maskin.
What In The World Happened Here? CXI: (
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wagga
The
Capanna Regina Margherita is located at 14,816 feet above sea level on the Italian-Swiss border.
What In The World Happened Here? CXII: (
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wagga
Masada What In The World Happened Here? CXIII: (
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wagga
In 1934, a few hundred miles from the finish of an 11,300 mile air race from London to Melbourne, a DC2 airliner was lost in a thunderstorm without working communications equipment. The mayor of Albury, a small town on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, had the city engineer flash the city's lights on and off to spell "Albury" in Morse code.
It saved the day. What In The World Happened Here? CXIV: (
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wagga
A spectacular meteorite over Nevada and Te California Sierra landed near Sutter's Mill.
Fragments were worth good money. NASA even enlisted a
zeppelin in searching for a crater.
What In The World Happened Here? CXV: (
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wagga
A sign in the
Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin explains "The cat and the rat." The one, presumably chasing the other, became trapped in an organ pipe in the 1850s and were mummified." They are referred to in James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake", which contains the line: "as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ."
What In The World Happened Here? CXVI: (
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wagga
Malibu Creek State Park in Los Angeles County has been the scene of many TV and movie shoots, including MASH.
What In The World Happened Here? CXVII: (
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wagga
The
Mission Inn Hotel and Spa, a historic hotel in downtown Riverside, CA, houses a museum that includes
The Famous Fliers Wall.
What In The World Happened Here? CXVIII: (
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AlanK
Germany surrendered to the Western Allies in a schoolhouse in Reims, France on May 7, 1945.
What In The World Happened Here? CXIX: (
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AlanK
Eldoret, Kenya has produced more championship runners than any other town in the world.
What In The World Happened Here? CXX: (
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wagga
Eva Pitt's panorama of St. Mary's Church, Lead, North Yorkshire, England. This "redundant church" was built in the 14th Century. It sati n close proximity to the battlefield of Towton where, on March 29, 1461, the longest and the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil took place, bringing to an end the Wars of the Roses.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXI: (
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saltydog
In 1874, a rare
transit of Venus across the face of the sun provided the means to measure the size of the solar system.
A transit will occur on June 5, 2012.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXII: (
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wagga
Colditz Cock was a glider built by British POWs in an attempt to escape form Colditz Castle in Germany in 1945. The glider never flew, but the story inspired the 1971 TV movie "The Birdmen."
What In The World Happened Here? CXXIII: (
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AlanK
Deep Springs College is a prestigious and very unusual institution in Inyo County, CA with an all-male student body numbering about 26. It is currently embroiled in a controversy over becoming co-ed.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXIV: (
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wagga
The Breadknife, an outstanding feature of the Warrumbungles, is off-limits to climbers due to the danger of bombarding with rocks circumnavigators on foot.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXV: (
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wagga
The
Museum of Lone Pine Film History houses
Nudie Cohn's customized 1975 Cadillac Eldorado and the WhitneyZone Whitney Web Cam.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXVI: (
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wagga
Rick Rojatt, "The Human Fly", flew standing on top of a DC-8 cruising at 250 knots at the Mojave air races, among other places.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXVII: (
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wagga
During WWII,
Boeing Plant 2 in King County, WA was disguised as a residential neighborhood.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXVIII: (
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wagga
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson is considered a pioneering classic of outdoor literature.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXIX: (
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wagga
The
Cooper Vane, named for D.B. Cooper, the most famous airplane hijacker in history, is a spring-loaded mechanical paddle that prevents the rear stairway on a Boeing 727 from being lowered in flight. One does not see a lot of rear stairways on airplanes these days, but Cooper jumped from one. And maybe lived.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXX: (
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wagga
2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the
Falklands War (Guerra de las Malvinas).
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXI: (
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Harvey Lankford
The
Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is not accessible to the public due to U and Pu contamination from its Rocky Flats Plant days.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXII: (
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wagga
The James Joyce Tower and Museum is a Martello tower in Dublin. Joyce spent six nights there in 1904
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXIII: (
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wagga
The United States declared war on the United Kingdom (then of Great Britain and Ireland) on June 18, 1812. Today, a statue of
Orpheus at Fort McHenry commemorates the contribution of Francis Scott Key.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXIV: (
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Harvey Lankford
Balloons played a role in the American Civil War. The
Intrepid was deployed at the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXV: (
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wagga
Alan Turing was born in 1912. He lived in the pictured building at Bletchley Park (of British code-breaking fame) in 1939-40.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXVI: (
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wagga
Photo 51 is a famous 1952 x-ray diffraction image that provided crucial evidence for the structure of DNA.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXVII: (
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wagga
The Record Plant was a series of three recording studios founded by Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone beginning in 1968. The Sausalito Plant (pictured) opened in October, 1972 and was a major player in the San Francisco music scene.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXVIII: (
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saltydog
Mount Rushmore is named after a New York lawyer. It was originally "Six Grandfathers" to the Lakota Sioux, who were granted the Black Hills in perpetuity by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
What In The World Happened Here? CXXXIX: (
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wagga
Among the notable architectural highlights of Fermilab is the new
Feynman Computing Center (
pic).
What In The World Happened Here? CXL: (
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wagga
Ned Kelly (see XXIX) visited Jerilderie in 1879. The
Jerilderie police station and gaol features 19 structural components mimicking Ned Kelly's armor. The man some called
the rightful king of England died here on June 30, 2012.
What In The World Happened Here? CXLI: (
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wagga
Buck Owens Crystal Palace is a highlight of Bakersfield, CA.
What In The World Happened Here? CXLII: (
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AlanK
July 9 was the 50th anniversary of the
Starfish Prime nuclear test, which taught the US and the world a lot about the havoc that high altitude nuclear blasts cause. (Much was already known about lower-altitude blasts.)
What In The World Happened Here? CXLIII: (
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AlanK
The world's largest known specimen of
Bigcone Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga macrocarpa) is located on Bear Canyon Drive in Baldy Village, CA. Regulars on this board trek past it... well, regularly on their way up the Bear Flat Trail (aka the Village Church Trail, aka the Old Man's Trail,, aka the Mount Baldy Trail).
What In The World Happened Here? CXLIV: (
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AlanK
Marilyn Monroe dies on August 5, 1962 and is buried in the
Westwod Village Memorial Park Cemetery.
What In The World Happened Here? CXLV: (
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Steve C
The
Tehachapi Loop is a spiral of railroad track in Keene, CA that helps trains going through the Tehachapi Pass gain altitude at a reasonable rate. Keene is also the site of the Cesar Chavez National Monument, which was
dedicated by President Obama on October 8, 2012.
What In The World Happened Here? CXLVI: (
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wagga
The camera at the end of the robotic arm on the Mars rover Curiosity has a calibration target that looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny. Its purpose is to test performance of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Meanwhile, the vehicle was slated to complete its first 1320 feet of travel, meaning (to some) that it now holds the record for the fastest quarter mile by a nuclear-powered Martian rover.
What In The World Happened Here? CXLVII: (
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Harvey Lankford
The
triple crossing at Richmond, VA enables three train lines to enter Main Street Station [see also
page 572].
What In The World Happened Here? CXLVIII: (
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wagga
Sanger, CA: The San Joaquin River crosses the Kings River on it's way south to Bakersfield. [This point is the subject of further discussion
here and
here.]
What In The World Happened Here? CXLIX: (
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wagga
Hospital Rock in Sequoia National Park was the site of several recoveries by injured early settlers. Hale Tharp gave the spot its name after a couple of incidents
What In The World Happened Here? CL: (
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saltydog
What In The World Happened Here? CLI: (
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wagga
Eli Cohen spied for Israel in the
Golan Heights during the Six Day War in 1967. He suggested that the Syrian soldiers in bunkers manning the armaments would be more comfortable and productive if they were sheltered by trees, suggesting quick-growing non-native Eucalyptus, which led to the instruction to Israeli pilots "Bomb The Foreign Eucalyptus Trees."
What In The World Happened Here? CLII: (
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wagga
Alvin M. "Tex" Johnston was a Boeing test pilot best known for performing a barrel-roll in a Boeing 367-80 jet in a demonstration flight over Lake Washington, near Seattle, on August 7, 1955. It was
caught on film. What In The World Happened Here? CLIII: (
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wagga
Sandy Island, west of the northern end of New Caledonia, has been removed from Google Earth because it doesn't exist.
What In The World Happened Here? CLIV: (
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wagga
What In The World Happened Here? CLV: (
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wagga
Pumpkin Island, near the Great Barrier Reef, has been temporarily re-named
XXXX Island after a Queensland brewer leased it in 2012 in order to create a
blokes' paradise. What In The World Happened Here? CLVI: (
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wagga
Boeing engineers
use spuds, in lieu of actual humans, to improve WiFi service in their airplanes.
What In The World Happened Here? CLVII: (
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wagga
NORAD tracks Santa, and has since December 24, 1955 (actually, it was CONAD up to 1958). It started when a Sears store placed an ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper which included a wrong number for Santa Claus. Kids got the Colorado Springs Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Center instead. CONAD/NORAD is evidently a good sport when nuclear missiles are not involved.
What In The World Happened Here? CLVIII: (
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wagga
What In The World Happened Here? CLIX: (
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wagga
What In The World Happened Here? CLX: (
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wagga
What In The World Happened Here? CLXI: (
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wagga
What In The World Happened Here? CLXII: (
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wagga
What In The World Happened Here? CLXIII: (
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wagga
